Opening this January at the Vargas Museum is Lupa: Struggle for Land – a group exhibition by progressive Filipino artists, artist collectives and non-traditional media practitioners reflecting on the question of land.

Comprising works in various media made by two generations of visual artists, Lupa: Struggle for Land weighs on the states of oppression and exploitation that the peasantry—the country’s most populous social sector—faces. The exhibit looks back on the decades of landlessness, usury, land grabbing by both the colonial and native elite, natural resource plunder, and worsening poverty and their effects on society and the generations to come.

The exhibit is a follow-up initiative to an earlier show entitled Kapital: Tribute to Labor, held in 2010 also at the Vargas Musuem. Kapital explored the tenuous relationships between worker and capitalist, labor and globalization, subject and empire. The two exhibitions attempt to continue the reflection on how both land and capital are historically connected and inseparable from the current state of social unrest and the people’s long-term aspirations for development.